Galvez: Over 216,000 medical frontliners vaccinated vs COVID-19 as of March 16

MANILA, Philippines — A total of 216,794 medical frontliners received vaccine doses against COVID-19 as of Tuesday, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. said.

This is about 17,000 more from the Department of Health’s tally on Monday, he added.

“As of 11 a.m. today, mayroon na po tayong 216,794 na nagkaroon na ng (a total of 216,794 was given) vaccination,” Galvez said in a Palace briefing on Tuesday.

The Philippines has been rolling out its COVID-19 vaccination program since March 1, using 600,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines from China and 525,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility.

Galvez said about 2.3 million more vaccine doses from Sinovac and AstraZeneca are expected to arrive in the country in late March or early April.

Galvez admitted that vaccinations for medical frontliners are a bit slow because the hospitals have to do these by batches of 100 or 50 personnel in case adverse effects would be experienced.

“Para ‘yung manning sa ospital ay hindi maapektuhan… Hindi pwedeng sabay-sabay magbakuna, sinasabi nga nila kailangan by batches lalung lalo na pag nagkaroon ng adverse effect, pagka-once nagkaroon ng downtime yung mga ating mga vaccinee, magsa-suffer automatically ‘yung mga hospital,” he explained.

(So that the manning in hospitals will not be affected. Vaccinations cannot be done all at once, only by batches in case of adverse effects because if the vaccinees experience a down time, the hospital will suffer.)

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